


indigestion

by setokaibas



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, contains references to gabriel's more questionable actions, fluffy mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9650435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setokaibas/pseuds/setokaibas
Summary: for ml fandom week on tumblr, day 3: love squareaka: chat noir screws up again, but this time, it’s marinette who saves him.post-hawkmoth, no identity reveal. adrien and marinette are both twenty-two.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is mostly fluff. adrien-centric. crosspost from @maskedblanc on tumblr. constructive criticism only, please. kudos and reviews very much appreciated. thanks for reading, and have a blessed day!

Looking back, Chat Noir had absolutely no coherent idea how he managed to get himself into such a mess.

After all, the evening had been relatively quiet; the nightclubs in the heart of the city pulsed with their usual tumult, and voices rang through the most popular streets. Only a few robbers and petty thugs found themselves prey to the black cat’s bored meandering about the rooftops, and this led him to soon give up his prowl in favor of something more entertaining: scoping out Paris’ best bakeries.

Almost anyone who’d managed to escape from between Gabriel Agreste’s hands to sneak Adrien over to their house knew his weakness for anything remotely resembling high-calorie food. He’d never ask for it outright unless famished, as he never wanted to be a burden to the comparatively meager finances of the average Parisian (despite one incident he hoped Sabine Dupain-Cheng had since forgiven him for wreaking). Ever since his late teens, the vice had gently drawn to a subtle preference, and given way to more sensible thinking about the type of life he wanted to lead.

Lean times had since called him to another round of modeling for his father, however, and it was beginning to show. Hero work had already made Chat svelte and hard-muscled, but it wasn’t enough, and he had to lose ten pounds to squeeze into the heinously small clothes Gabriel Agreste’s latest favorite believed constituted haute couture. Frankly, the all-too-familiar experience had left him miserable and unable to concentrate on his university physics classes. He was no ill-mannered schoolboy– but this food deprivation needed to end. Idly feeling a nearly-visible rib with the pad of his finger, the cat hero’s stomach responded with a growl that made him want to leap to the nearest patisserie. It took him five minutes of debating with himself through the swings towards Notre Dame, but Adrien finally turned around and hastened towards the nearest bakery.

The cat hero quickly reached his destination, managing to avoid the stray gazes of a few passers-by who stumbled about the narrow sidewalks brushing the streets. His sharpened senses picked up the semi-faint scent of croissants and chocolate eclairs, but fortunately he was a man possessed of enough self-control to calmly drop down the sidewalk and turn over the charming sign that graced the bakery’s front door. As silly as it was, thrills of hope shot through the cat’s chest at the thought of finally, finally, having something of substance to eat. Unfortunately for his aching belly, the shop had been firmly closed since five o’clock.

This disappointing discovery led him to climb up a fire escape with slight notes of panic. Internally bashing himself for thinking that someone not keeping ludicrous hours would be willing to oblige his need, Chat Noir slumped against the side of a rooftop air conditioner in defeat. He didn’t have enough time to wait for the grocery stores around town to open in eight hours, and exhaustion gnawed badly at the weaker joints of his body. At this rate, the money he’d squished against his thigh would simply have to wait another day to bring him relief from his admittedly self-imposed torture.

A lightning-fast thought leapt through Adrien’s mind as he surveyed the glowing lights about him from the shadows. There was one person that he could go to, one who he knew would probably help him, but at a cost to his own sanity. At this point, the cat hero supposed, he had no choice but to venture to the home of Marinette Dupain-Cheng. The rooftops found themselves quickly devoured underneath his rushing staff and pounding heart, but it seemed like an eternity to the starving feline before he carefully tiptoed onto the edge of his savior’s balcony. He stole into the shadow provided by the scarce houseplants. Although the light outside was weak, he managed to make out the sleeping form of a young woman. Marinette’s face lolled over folded arms as her loose hair, blue-black like the new bruises he saw on her legs in class sometimes, painted a raucous picture around her various scribblings. Adrien smiled as he remembered the rudimentary versions of a few which were now fully colored, and he would have remained there happily in reminiscence– had it not been for the rather embarrassing fact that she had looked up and was now staring.

“Chat Noir, it’s 1 am. Why are you here?”

Slightly startled, Adrien slipped comfortably back into his mask’s way of interacting with Marinette. Slinking out of his hiding place, his blonde hair faintly gleamed in the streetlight as he gave her a Cheshire smile. “Why, milady, is it never not a purrfect time to see my favorite Parisian?” Although he would later admit that perhaps the second part of his sentence was a bit much, he still couldn’t help but feel a bit disheartened at her slight sleepy eye-roll.

She still let him in though, and the young man let a juvenile purr rumble in his chest at the memories the room brought back. It had been such a long time since he had been there as Adrien, the scant years that passed seeming like another lifetime. He fluffed a reupholstered pink pillow with his clawed hand, pretended towards naive wonder at the sketches on her wall, and then executed a masterful jump-flop that guaranteed his way onto her bed. An aching back felt renewed, and he almost closed his eyes in sleep before being interrupted by the loud rumble of his stomach. He heard Marinette make a somewhat concerned noise from an indeterminate place on the other side of the room before she said, “You’ve always looked a bit thin to me. Is that just because you’re a cat?”

That statement–coming from his sweet Marinette, of all people– landed right in his half-roused gut, and Adrien’s breath came with more difficulty in the moments directly following it. What was he supposed to say? That single, simple sentence felt worse than seeing his name splayed out all over the magazines after a subpar shoot and stopped just short of the place where he’d locked up all his father’s disappointed words. A pat answer bubbled up on his tongue, and he bit it back just in time to hear Marinette moving down the stairs. His heart palpitated uncomfortably at the thought his non-answer had caused her to vacate the premises, and he lurched up waist-first to meet a headful of ceiling. The resulting spike of pain caused him to let out a yowl that probably woke the whole neighborhood; this was further evidenced by the slightly sour look that Marinette gave him when she caught him in a rocking posture on the comforter upon her return from her all-too-lengthy journey to another floor. As she started to reach up towards the top bunk of her bed, Chat spotted something in her hands. His heart melted when he realized his feeling around her– one of warmth and camaraderie– had been right all along, and he gratefully took the plated croissant sandwich with a grateful smile before falling upon it like the ravenous man he was. The pastry was big, taking up nearly the entirety of the plate, and Adrien realized she must have rummaged through a care package from Sabine to find it. Its crisp buttery taste assaulted deprived senses with welcome glee, and all too soon the taste of turkey, fresh lettuce, and cheese left his palate with insufficient relish.

As he used the paper napkin to wipe at his mouth, he noticed Marinette’s eyes quietly examining him. Adrien met them with little hesitance; their intensity, though, left the shy part of him reeling and scampering back to his room. They reminded him eerily of another woman, one he hadn’t seen in days, but that currently did not haunt his thoughts as much as the bluenette in front of him. Yes, he had thought about Marinette more than his partner lately, but somehow it no longer felt as wrong as it had when he batted the feelings away with the elegance of a tom. He found himself drinking in every aspect of her figure, from the freshly painted toenails to her newly pent-up bun that rioted with unruly strands. A warmth swelled in his ribcage not unlike the sandwich itself, and his thoughts flowed into the movements of lithe muscle as he clambered down the ladder and into the arms of a surprised Marinette.

There was resistance in her body at first, but it uncoiled a little once he finally managed to croak out a husky sentence: “Why?” Like honey in one of his many cups of tea, the question curled in the air almost as if suspended by time and space, buoyed along by everything the cat hero had been through in his short life. He didn’t anticipate saying anything– in fact, he never anticipated anything beyond the way a quiet sigh exhaled from beneath invitingly pink lips. In time, her arms returned the wrap of his own as she stretched up to accommodate his greater height. The crook of her neck rounded into the space under his slumped head, and Adrien nearly found himself embarrassed at the fact he seemed less than substantial underneath her weight. To an outside viewer, the question might have laid unanswered for far longer than was proper, but Chat Noir’s buzzing mind was simply content to take the window of breathing room he had been given and run with it for as long as Marinette would let him be with her that night.

All too soon, the bluenette’s arms slipped from around him, and he nearly cried out in disappointment. However, it turned soon to curiosity as Adrien felt Marinette poking softly about on his abdomen. The sensation reminded him of all the designer’s careful hands at photoshoots, where hems were taken in and pleats smoothed to a sensible crisp. He wondered why the thought of his work– or really, anything having to do with his father– had come to him without bitterness, only to be drawn back to reality by an uncomfortable movement. This give-and-take of flexion and softening continued for a few moments, and the sudden intimacy of it coated Adrien’s throat with a sense of hesitance that made his stuttering mind let go of whatever anxious thought was about to pour out. However, his persona came through for him once again, and his newfound spirit sang through his blood into a terrible flirtatious line: “Checking out the goods, m’lady?”

This engendered an amused noise from Marinette, but the tinges of sadness that coated her eyes as she looked searingly up into his mask nullified any sort of response he might have deemed appropriate. She looked down for a moment, chewing the peak of her bottom lip, and Adrien felt an urge to take her in his arms again before she looked back up. His stomach roiled as he wondered what she was thinking; could he be disappointed in him, too? Blissfully, however, he soon found that his occasional tendency to suppose the worst in interpersonal relations when it came to Marinette was entirely incorrect. The warmth of her hand came up to rest against one of his chapped cheeks before he realized it, and her thumb gently stroked the surprised expression he made. A grimace rose to Marinette’s face as she finally spoke, one that again cut him to the core: “If you feed cats, won’t they come back?”

All of a sudden, Chat Noir’s heart jumped out of his chest. She had wanted him to stay, wanted the thin embrace he’d managed to give her at such an early hour, wanted every part of him and not just the Adrien Agreste. Tension he didn’t know was weighing him down lifted from his shoulders, and he rashly pulled her closer with an “Only for you, milady.” Marinette stopped her strokes on his face momentarily, but only to smooth her face out and say: “Chat, your breath smells like meat.”

The laughter that followed helped every day after that go down a little bit more easily.


End file.
